Monday, May 21, 2007

Chapter 27

As Daniel stepped out of the lift onto the empty void deck, he breathed a sigh of relief. It seems that his grandmother is doing rather well after suffering such a terrible fall. She is really getting too old to be left at home, unsupervised. Perhaps he should hire a care-giver for her soon.

He had just rounded the corner of the row of letterboxes when a throng of cats came bounding up to him. He smiled and squatted down to give each one a polite scratch under the chin.

“Hey there buddies! Missed me much?” he said adoringly, and tenderly scooped a young one into his arms, “let’s go sit at the playground, shall we?” he said, and led the cats in the direction of the playground.

As the playground came into view, so did a very familiar figure. Daniel felt a sudden, extremely heavy thud in his chest. He’d recognize that silhouette anywhere! He hadn’t expected to see her here again. Daniel unconsciously shifted to conceal himself in the shadow of a pillar and watched the girl from where he hid.

There was something peculiar about this girl. She intrigues him. Like, really intrigues him. Twenty years of his fraternizing with the female half of his species, and no one has ever sparked even the remotest interest in him. No one has ever made his head turn, or stopped him in his tracks like this girl has.

He would never admit this aloud, but sometimes he wondered if this wasn’t the fabled love-at-first-sight.

How incredulous! LAFS is about as reliable as a salesman trying to sell a palmistry guidebook. In fact, he used to think that LAFS is a laughable reflection of hormonal tendencies, something so irrefutably erratic that no sane person would pay it any amount of serious consideration. He, for one, would never trust his own hormones, save for their homeostatic capabilities.

But dang! Hormones or not, this girl makes LAFS feel like a chocolate buffet --- intrinsically wrong, but it hits you in all the right places.

A brush of a cat against his leg brought him out of his reverie. He focused his attention on the girl again.

She was sitting extremely still; and even though he couldn’t see her clearly from this distance, somehow he knew that she must have closed her eyes. He decided that this was probably the most opportune moment for him to approach.

He stepped bravely out of the shadows and walked towards her with a rather stiff gait and a train of cats trailing behind him. As he got closer, he saw that her eyes were indeed closed. He wondered if he could surprise her, and tried to walk as noiselessly as he could.

Abruptly, she opened her eyes. Daniel faltered slightly in his steps when he realized she had seen him. Would she walk away like before? Should he stop approaching? But before he could come to a conscious decision, he found that he was already standing before her.

At this moment, he must say he is truly at a loss for words. Or a suitable action. Perhaps he was truly stumped by the eeriness about the way she was unblinkingly staring up at him. Did he, perhaps, look like a vampire under the dim lights? Was she so shocked to see him that her body has grown all frozen from neck down?

He didn’t know how long he stood there, unmoving. He didn’t know how he could stand there unmoving while she looked at him in that unnerving way. But when he finally wanted to say something, she beat him to it.

“Daniel,” she said airily.

And he wondered if he’ll ever know a more potent aphrodisiac. Damn those LAFS hormones!

“Grace,” he replied a little hoarsely, and took a seat in the swing next to hers. He wondered if she will keep looking at him like that for rest of the evening, but her attention was averted away from him the very next moment.

Grace picked up the tiny orange fur ball that was curling around her ankle.

“My, who is this tiny fella?” Grace cooed at the tiny kitten on her lap. Then, she felt a larger warmth rub against her ankle and looked down.

“Nini!” she gasped when she saw the mosaic tabby she so sorely missed. She bent forward to stroke the tabby along the length of its back, feeling very relieved to see that Nini has that clear look in its eyes again. Then, something struck her. She looked away from Nini and at the kitten now pawing at the fabric of her shorts.

They have the same eyes!

“Oh my God!” Grace exclaimed, “You’re Nini’s kid!” she held the little kitten up to her eye level and watched lovingly as it meowed at her. She couldn’t resist giving it a peck on the top of its head, and set it down on her lap once more.

She looked around the area for the other kittens and saw three of them huddled together behind their mother. She was about to reach out for them when she heard a deep voice on her left.

“Hey! No stealing!” Daniel reprimanded the cats as he pushed away the prying heads and took the bowl of mackerel away.

Grace had to do a double-take, for she had cleanly forgotten that she wasn’t alone. When she saw Daniel point at the bowl of cat food, she merely nodded her permission and watched him distribute it to the greedy buggers. Then, he sat down again beside her.

They sat in silence, seemingly engrossed with watching the cats feed, when in truth, neither had any idea what to say or do next. It wasn’t a horrible silence; but it was the sort that preceded a first kiss in some dramas. As it was, both found themselves growing more and more unsettled by the indecipherable currents this silence seemed to be amplifying between them.

“Why are you here?” they spoke at the same time. An impressive pause ensued.

“I –” they began together, and then aborted the sentence in perfect synchrony.

Daniel chortled. The sound of his laugh melted through the stifling atmosphere.

“I was visiting my grandmother. She was discharged from the hospital a few days ago. We met at the hospital, remember?” Daniel said. He picked up a black and white kitten with one hand, and setting it onto Grace’s lap, he stroked the little thing with his long fingers. “How about you?” he asked.

Grace did not reply immediately. She looked disapprovingly at the big hand that had so innocently invaded her personal space. It wasn’t really touching her per se, but seeing it hover so...…. intimately over her lap made the hairs on her thighs tingle indubitably.

As if on cue, Daniel withdrew his hand frantically. “Sorry,” he said with a bashful smile. But the next moment, he wondered if he had over-reacted. What if his apology had tainted that innocent gesture? What if it made Grace notice an indecency he hasn’t intended? He should have withdrawn his hand more subtly, damn it!

That was cute, Grace thought fondly. Of course, she didn’t mean cute cute. In fact, she didn’t know what she meant at all, when she thought his antics were cute. But she supposed she could really get used to him.

It.

She could really get used to his antics.

Wait, is there really a difference between getting used to him and getting used to his antics? Never mind.

“I stay around here,” Grace finally spoke. She planted the kitten safely onto the ground and stood, “I’m going home now. Do you want to walk me there?” she said in a barely audible voice.

Without waiting for a reply, she began to walk away; wondering why she had asked him to walk her back.

Wondering if he would walk her back.

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Sunday, May 20, 2007

Chapter 26

A soft breeze rustled through the trees and sent a few fallen, crumpled leaves rolling across the concrete ground with a dry crackle. A lone figure sat, rather forlornly, on a rusty swing, allowing the periodic creaking of its chains to lull her senses into a dull calm.

Grace felt totally alone at this particular coordinate in the space-time continuum. None of her cats had come out to meet her, despite the bowl of delicious mackerel she had brought with her, now set aside untouched and unneeded. To think she had really looked forward to discussing her recent lapse of emotional control with them. Sighing to nothing in particular, she decided that the dead-looking rain-tree seemed a marginally better conversation partner than the cold air that surrounded her.

What shall I think about first? Grace asked the tree with her mental voice. The tree merely swayed in companionable gentleness, and waited patiently for her to continue. She felt like she has much to think about tonight. She could think about her getting-from-bad-to-worse aversion to males in general. Or that inexplicable panic attack last night. And then, there was Daniel.

The name came unbidden, and stilled her restful rocking. The sudden cessation of the creaking broadcasted a silence that filled every tiny crevice in the area. That name seemed to echo all around her.

Daniel, she mouthed the name timidly, afraid that even the softest whisper of its syllables could be heard by the shadowy darkness.

Daniel. She wanted to know him. Like, really know him, short of the biblical way. She wanted to know how he laughed, and cried; how he slept, and woke; how he likes his coffee and eggs. She wanted to know his person, his being. Even his very soul.

But most bewilderedly, she wanted him to know her.

How did it come to that? Two weeks ago, she barely even knew he existed. Was she really so starved of comforting human contact to be imprinted on the first being who offered her a reassuring embrace? No. Surely, that doesn’t explain why she had felt safe in those arms in the first place.

Why then, was this man…… different?

Grace closed her eyes and let herself feel the air chill her even more. She inhaled the scent of moist earth, mingled with a tint of iron. She listened intently to every hiss and whistle the winds uttered. Suddenly, she heard it. The answer she was looking for rang clear as a bell in her ears. Her eyes shot open in surprise at that hallucination.

Just then, her eyes widened in wonderment at what she saw. There, right ahead of her, a man was striding purposefully towards her; and she found she could not look away.

It was Daniel. The same man she was just thinking about. But how?

“Dessstiny,” the winds whispered again. And she felt like she would never breathe properly again.

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